Behind their guard, the rest of the soldiers disembarked from the aircraft. From the small view Mallory had of the LZ, he could see that those soldiers were filing out to join a cordon around the whole landing area. A last soldier joined the medic in lifting Brody’s stretcher. The pair carried Brody out of the aircraft.
Dörner stood up. “We need to go with him!”
The last guard turned his weapon so its barrel was pointed at Dörner’s abdomen. Mallory took her arm and pulled her back to her seat. “He’s getting medical attention. There’s nothing you can do.”
She yanked her arm away. “Keep your hands off me.” However, she remained seated.
“Someone’s coming,” Pak said.
Mallory leaned a little to the side so they could see past their guardsman. There was someone coming though the cordon. The man wasn’t in uniform. Instead, he wore a white collarless shirt and black pants under a white topcoat that hung near to the ground and trailed behind him like a cape. The man was bald and was old enough that his age had become completely indeterminate. Somewhere over seventy years standard.
There was no hair on his head, and his brow and scalp were marked by a series of tattoos, each roughly about ten centimeters square. All were abstract designs, self-contained, and each apparently unique. He walked up to the doorway and said, “You’re dismissed.”
Their guard came to attention, turned to the newcomer, nodded, and marched out of the aircraft. The newcomer pulled himself up into the aircraft and faced the three of them.
“What have you done with Dr. Brody?” Dörner said.
“The injured man? He’s being tended to.”
“We need to see—” Dörner began.
The man cut her off with a gesture. “Please, some courtesy. This is my planet, at least for the moment. And you are trespassing.”
“Our ship suffered a catastrophic failure,” Mallory said. “We were coming here for help.”
“And the other ships?”
“Other ships?” Dörner and Pak exclaimed at the same time.
“I have at least one hundred fifty spacecraft confirmed, before they took out our satellites.” He looked at each of them in turn. “You are going to tell me their intentions.”
One hundred fifty ships?
Mosasa had said that the Caliphate would be massing whole fleets. They were here? Now?
“Why is the Confederacy here?” The man repeated.
“Not the Confederacy,” Mallory said. “The Confederacy doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Who, then? Who did you bring here?”
“I think those ships are from the Eridani Caliphate. They are going to want to stake a claim on this section of space.”
“You think,” the man faced Mallory. His mouth formed a hard line. “You think?”
“I’m as surprised by their presence as you are.”
“I find that hard to believe. You would have me believe you are not a party to an invasion fleet? The first offworlders to arrive in a century?”
Mallory shook his head. “You can debrief us separately. We can give you all the details you want.”
“I will.”
“They haven’t attempted contact with you?”
“They—”
The radio in the cabin squealed with static and started its incomprehensible babble again. Almost simultaneously, one of the guards stepped up to the doorway. He held a small comm unit.
“Sir, we’re getting an unauthorized transmission.”
The man took the comm; the volume was high enough that Mallory could hear it.
The voice was familiar. The last time he had heard it, it was quoting Revelation.
“I am Adam. I am the Alpha, the first in the next epoch of your evolution. I will hand you the universe. Follow me and you will become as gods.”
No, Mallory thought, it was not the Caliphate. It was something much, much worse. . . .
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Visions
No escape is final.
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
None are more hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG von Goethe (1749-1832)
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi-HD 101534
“One aircraft,” Nickolai said.
The world went white, then red. The vibration threw him on the ground as he realized that there was no way he should be aware of hitting the ground. He landed on his side and felt the ground beneath him rumbling, oscillating in a great sine wave under his good arm. Around him there was a great groaning, as if the planet itself was in agony.
The light faded to red and he saw a distinct edge, a hemisphere engulfing them, marking the limit of the light, the red saturating everything outside.
Then the light faded a bit more and he could see the shadow of one of the nearby buildings. It stood nearly at the outside edge of the hemisphere, which was the only reason he could see it.
Nicolai watched the building disintegrate in slow motion, the shadow of the building dissolving. More detail became visible, even as his eyes adjusted. Flames rolled across the ground, too slowly.
“What is this?” he whispered.
The fireball crawled by, wrapping itself around the hemisphere.
The slow rumbling of the ground ceased, and the world stopped screaming its death cry. He pushed himself up and got to his feet.
“What is this?” he repeated.
Behind him, he heard the voice of Flynn/Tetsami. “They nuked us. The bastards nuked us.”
“How . . .” Nickolai raised his artificial hand before him. A nuclear blast should have fried the electronics. And his eyes—an EMP should have destroyed them and probably a good part of his brain, too, as closely as they were wired to it.
Kugara echoed him, “How are we still alive?”
“The Protean,” Flynn/Tetsami said. “It has an Emerson field that’s far beyond anything else . . .”
Kugara put a hand on his arm, the real one, and asked, “Are you all right?”
He watched the slow-motion holocaust outside the hemisphere surrounding them. He shook his head and said, “No.”
“Are you injured?”
“No. Leave me alone.” He stared out and wondered if it would be possible to walk through the barrier. Her hand stayed on his arm. “Please?”
Her hand dropped and he heard Flynn/Tetsami say, “Leave him be. It’s a bit much to absorb. As far as I can tell, we’re safe in here.”
He heard them walk away.
It took minutes for the hemisphere to fade. He stood at a razor-sharp barrier between the untouched earth and a sheet of black glass. The air was rank with the smell of fire. The air itself seemed to have burned, filled with a fine gray ash that limited visibility and made his nose itch.
Probably poison to breathe.
Not that he cared much. He had walked to the edge of hell, and now at least it looked the part. The only sound was a distant crackle that he suspected was the forest around them burning to the ground.
He coughed and wondered if the slow suicide of standing here was preferable to walking into the Protean den. He was certain that the structure would offer shelter from the radiation and the fallout. But at what price, he didn’t care to guess.